‘A million might be just a tiny bit of an exaggeration.’ But he half smiled and held her gaze without flinching. ‘Erin, I never shared any of myself with any of them. I took them out, wined and dined them, had fun with them but they remained strangers, even if they didn’t take a similar view. With you…? I think I’ve been sharing bits of myself for years without paying the slightest bit of attention to it. And then when we became lovers… I foolishly assumed that I was going to remain immune to any woman having influence over my emotions.’
‘You’re saying…’ Erin whispered. ‘I don’t get what you’re saying.’
‘I’m saying that I fell in love with you, Erin. I never saw it coming but then, when I think about it, it came in small steps and all those small steps were invisible at the time.’
‘Fell in love…?’
‘I had so many opportunities to tell you. When you said that you were leaving, when you handed me that resignation letter, the bottom of my world dropped out. But even then I was in denial, too afraid to admit that I’d given my heart and soul to someone, that I had relinquished power over my own feelings and emotions, which was something I swore I’d never do.’
‘I just can’t believe that you’re saying all this, Raffaele.’
‘I know. I also know that I took a chance coming here. When I saw you standing outside the office with the lawyer—’
‘Yousawme…? With Colin? But when? I haven’t been back to London since coming down here.’
‘On the day you left,’ Raffaele said, flushing. He’d never felt more exposed but now he’d started, there were no signposts showing him how to veer off down another road, not that he wanted to. No, he wanted to share all of himself with the woman sitting opposite him, revealing nothing but on the other hand not turfing him out.
It gave him a glimmer of hope.
And then hope took wing and really began to soar when she reached forward and covered his hand with hers, then linked their fingers together.
He held those fingers tight, never wanting to let go.
‘I was jealous as hell of the man,’ he admitted gruffly. ‘And I was jealous of him at the party as well, even though I swept that aside, barely acknowledged it. It took everything inside me to be civil when I went to ask him about your whereabouts. It even occurred to me that I could have him transferred to another office—New York appealed—so that he was no longer competition on my doorstep.’
Erin smiled.
She squeezed his hand. If she could have bottled this moment forever, she would have.
‘You have no idea how tough the past week’s been for me,’ she confessed, her voice low, her heart beating fast as she strove to match his honesty with her own.
She’d spent so many years holding on to what she’d thought was a harmless crush, only for it to blossom into something far more dangerous to her peace of mind. Now she felt as though her emotions were waiting impatiently to burst their banks.
‘Tell me,’ Raffaele urged.
‘You’ve been honest with me so I’m going to be completely honest with you,’ Erin confided huskily. ‘I’ve had a crush on you for years.’ She reddened at the confession. She half turned away from his reaction but after just a second of surprise, his face registered satisfaction that thrilled her to the core and gave her the confidence to continue.
‘Tell me more. I’m all ears.’
‘That’s more like it.’ Erin grinned and then leaned forward to kiss him delicately on the side of his mouth only to succumb to something deeper and hungrier and more demanding when he cradled the back of her neck and properly returned her kiss.
‘What do you mean?’ he murmured, drawing back but keeping his hand on her neck, holding her close.
‘The brimming-over-with-self-confidence guy I ended up finding irresistible.’
‘Nope. Don’t recognise myself in that description.’ He kissed her again, a lingering kiss that left her trembling for more. ‘Although I’m very much liking the finding-irresistible part of what you just said. I think we should explore that line in a little more depth.’
‘You’re so full of yourself.’
‘And yet you fell in love with me…’
‘Yes, I did. I just thought that it was a harmless crush, a reaction to a broken heart, a safe refuge until I got my act together and started dating again. But the weeks became months and I guess I should have stopped and asked myself why I was stuck in a routine of fantasising about you instead of getting on with finding a guy…’
‘It’s so easy to work things out in retrospect. I could say the same about myself, about the way I found myself confiding in you without wondering how it was that something I loathed doing with other women came so easy to me when I was doing it to you. Signposts ignored.’
‘Yes.’ Erin nodded. ‘And then we became lovers…and I actually thought that once you were out of my system I would be able to move on. Of course, out there, I finally accepted the truth. I’d fallen for a guy who couldn’t love… The more I learned about you, the more I realised that.’
‘I never thought Icould loveuntil I did…’
‘It’s why I handed in my resignation. I knew that was what I was going to do when I returned to London because I just couldn’t envisage being in the same building as you, even if it was a couple of floors down, without my heart breaking over and over every day. Just knowing that you were only a heartbeat away, knowing that at some point I would bump into my replacement…it was too much…’
‘I was a fool, my darling, but I came to my senses and I’m just glad that I did, that I finally stopped letting my past to dictate my future. Although, if I’m honest, no woman had ever captivated me the way you had…so…’
‘Is there more?’
‘Much more. Or maybe notmuch.But the rest is very important, the rest of what I want and need to say. Erin… I can’t live without you.’ He leaned into her and clasped her hands. ‘I want to go to sleep with you by my side and wake up with you by my side. I want to hear your laughter every day and I’m addicted to the way you don’t mind telling me what you think. You make me a better person. Erin…’ He flushed and briefly looked away but then, when his eyes returned to her face, they were utterly serious. ‘I never thought I would hear myself say these words with love in my heart, vulnerable and not caring that I am, but will you marry me? Be my wife? Never leave me?’
‘Yes!’ She smiled tenderly at him. ‘After that wonderful prelude, my darling, I thought you’d never ask…’
